Saturday, December 10, 2005

There's Moorea to Life

Just returned from a fantastic stay in Tahiti, where we traveled first to the capitol of Papeete for a night and then to the neighboring island of Moorea for a longer stay. With none in the group ever having been to the Tahitian before, we didn't quite know what to expect. 'Island-time' was reported to have both a frustrating and calming effect, horrible when ordering food but just what the doctor ordered otherwise.

Arriving in Papeete was a bit underwhelming. There has been a week of protest and turmoil regarding the French government raising the general taxation rate over Polynesia. Upon landing, the transfer to the hotel from the airport was 'sans', due to a roadblock of burned out cars set by the protestors. Being island-time, they just put cars in the road that had already burned from separate, previous accidents, not having to bother to do any burning activities themselves. Echoes of the Paris riots last month not overlooked.

Papeete had all the tourist traps of black pearl shops, discotheques and coconut bra specialty markets, all of which we declined to indulge in. The first morning, we took the local ferry over to Moorea, a smooth half-hour across the channel. That night, we were treated to a traditional Polynesian revue with all-you-can-eat seafood display, with all Polynesian dancers guaranteed to be at least 1/16th Polynesian descent. Nothing says traditional Polynesian like an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, but our table did some serious damage to the local lobster population as a result.


Ahhh Moorea, where honeymooners go after a shotgun wedding to spend little Junior's community college fund. One of the immediate shocks in Tahiti was the exoberant price of everything. Not just the touristy items, such as the double-D coconut bras that I am fond of, but essentials like beer and nuts in which to accompany said beer. Herein lies a reason for locals to strike, I suppose.

The weather and the scenery could not have been more picturesque. We spent our days languidly idling in the lagoon, passing our time face down with the fishes. Life was snorkeling, eating and sleeping. In that order - although reverse it for me.

I was able to dust off four years of high school Français in order to stumble through ordering drinks and dinner, usually in a haberdashery of three different languages - Frenglañol, as we have dubbed it. Restaurant quality seemed to be pretty hit and miss in general. We noticed that there was an immediate surcharge of 35% for any place that had 'Chez' or 'Les' in the title. Our last night in Moorea, however, we quite unexpectedly stumbled onto a Mexican restaurant that provided the closest we've come to authentic Mexican food since leaving the California shores.

Leaving was a bit of a burden, as a majority of the flights out of Papeete leave after midnight - ours was 2am. The last ferry from Moorea set down in Papeete at 4:30pm, giving the option of either getting obliterated at the local bar or checking into a hotel for eight hours and sleeping through your wake-up call. Their tourist board is considering adopting the motto, 'Tahiti: Come. Stay. Miss Your Flight.' The airport was absolutely dead by the time we were allowed to check-in at midnight. I was straining hard on a Soduku puzzle and needed an extra half-hour to try to attempt completion, not thinking anything of it. Turns out, the only thing slower than 'island-time' is island-time at 12:30am. Tahiti Nui airlines just crawled their way through their customers at the counter. I don't know if it was they were counting out shell necklaces or had too much vanilla rum, but we got bogged in what initially looked like a manageable line for well over an hour, skirting our departure time a little to closely.

Then, the skies opened up. A monstrous clap of thunder accompanied the simultaneous arrival of tour bus after tour bus after massive tour bus of Japanese tourist. Like waves upon the rock did they spill out into the terminal, seemingly no end to the furious torrent. All of the sudden, so close to the end of the line, we were found wading in five feet of black hair and flash photography. Lo, the adjacent counter of the Japan Air Lines would not relent. They processed ten customers in the time it took Tahiti Nui to do a single one. What looked like an easy transition to the gate suddenly found us hundreds of people in line for the baggage screening. Alas, all was not lost. We were able to play the 'if you think we waited an hour and a half just to miss our flight' card and get our luggage pre-screened, missing the Tokyo subway scene of attendants having to jam masses of people through the metal detectors.

So, our 10-hour layover at Papeete came to an end as we drifted West over the International date line, causing us to cease to exist for the majority of Friday, December 9th. If a police officer asks where we were on that date, I'm not quite sure what the appropriate response would be.

posted by ncawthon at 7:23 PM